Magnetic stripe cards are presently used for a variety of purposes, but are perhaps best known for their application to credit cards used by most consumers. The magnetic stripe encodes data such as the credit card number, expiration date, and name of the card owner so that this information can be quickly and accurately conveyed through use of a magnetic stripe reader to a cash register or other electronic system for identifying the credit card in a transaction.
An average consumer by some estimates uses in excess of ten such transaction cards, and carries a variety of such credit cards, identification cards, and other transaction cards at any given time. Many such consumers carry such a number of transaction cards because different cards include different program features or benefits, such as discounts at particular issuing stores or cash back or some other reward for use, or provide unique functions such as identification for entering a building.
Although many consumers wish to carry or keep track of fewer cards than they have and use, the cards are issued by different organizations, and inclusion of multiple magnetic stripes representing different credit accounts on the same card has not been widely considered a practical solution. It is therefore desired to provide a method or system enabling a consumer to reduce the number of magnetic stripe cards that must be carried.